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willdpage's review against another edition
4.0
1. Walter and the Three-Legged King (3/5)
2. Purse (3/5)
3. I Make People Do Bad Things (4/5)
4. The Unremembered (4/5)
5. Chocolate Park (3/5)
6. What She Saw When They Flew Away (3/5)
7. He Who Takes the Pain Away (4/5)
8. CUE: Change (3/5)
9. The Room Where Ben Disappeared (3/5)
10. The Light of Cree (3/5)
11. The Teachings and Redemption of Ms. Fannie Lou Mason (5/5)
Maybe not unexpectedly, Chesya Burke uses Paul Laurence Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask" as epigraph, and I ultimately experienced the collection as a take on some of what lies just beneath the most publicly digestible/“acceptable” elements of Black (American) experience(s)—conjure, rage, tenderness, the intense and uncompromising trudge through what can only be described as horror, often angled towards just the faintest hope for something better.
I liked a lot of the ideas that the stories were built on, sometimes a little more than the stories themselves. I can't necessarily say I'd rather it’d been the opposite, though. Standouts for me were “I Make People Do Bad Things” and “The Teachings and Redemption of Ms. Fannie Lou Mason,” two of the historical pieces. Divergent settings (Harlem and small-town Kentucky) but equally rich. The relationship between the unraveling Walter and the Three-Legged King was moving. “Purse” was the shortest and maybe most unsettling. “What She Saw When They Flew Away,” with subtle hints at the fantastic at most, was otherworldly.
If you’re looking for a dose of genre-bending but horror-leaning short fiction that mostly centers Black women and girl characters, you might try Let’s Play White.
2. Purse (3/5)
3. I Make People Do Bad Things (4/5)
4. The Unremembered (4/5)
5. Chocolate Park (3/5)
6. What She Saw When They Flew Away (3/5)
7. He Who Takes the Pain Away (4/5)
8. CUE: Change (3/5)
9. The Room Where Ben Disappeared (3/5)
10. The Light of Cree (3/5)
11. The Teachings and Redemption of Ms. Fannie Lou Mason (5/5)
Maybe not unexpectedly, Chesya Burke uses Paul Laurence Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask" as epigraph, and I ultimately experienced the collection as a take on some of what lies just beneath the most publicly digestible/“acceptable” elements of Black (American) experience(s)—conjure, rage, tenderness, the intense and uncompromising trudge through what can only be described as horror, often angled towards just the faintest hope for something better.
I liked a lot of the ideas that the stories were built on, sometimes a little more than the stories themselves. I can't necessarily say I'd rather it’d been the opposite, though. Standouts for me were “I Make People Do Bad Things” and “The Teachings and Redemption of Ms. Fannie Lou Mason,” two of the historical pieces. Divergent settings (Harlem and small-town Kentucky) but equally rich. The relationship between the unraveling Walter and the Three-Legged King was moving. “Purse” was the shortest and maybe most unsettling. “What She Saw When They Flew Away,” with subtle hints at the fantastic at most, was otherworldly.
If you’re looking for a dose of genre-bending but horror-leaning short fiction that mostly centers Black women and girl characters, you might try Let’s Play White.
zellm's review against another edition
5.0
These stories are so viscerally discomforting and so so so well written. I loved the magical realism and horror elements here, and the wonderful commentary on the experience of being Black. This was an utterly fantastic book.
remigves's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
vampirehelpdesk's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed Burke’s writing style and I definitely want to read more of her work. I found a lot of these stories to have confusing, vague endings, but the writing was so enjoyable that I found myself caring less and less, but I did want some answers. A lot of these could easily be great novels themselves. My favorite stories were “The Unremembered”, “Chocolate Park”, “CUE: Change”, and “The Teachings and Redemption of Miss Fannie Lou Mason.”
reasie's review against another edition
3.0
A short story collection, mostly but not all speculative. Some very raw and rough stories - lots of emotion, some more speculative than others. I particularly liked the novella that ends the collection, and found her zombie story a refreshingly new take.
This author is still in college, I think, by her bio - so I imagine she will achieve astonishing heights if she's already writing stuff this powerful!
This author is still in college, I think, by her bio - so I imagine she will achieve astonishing heights if she's already writing stuff this powerful!
etakloknok's review against another edition
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.25
activehearts's review against another edition
3.0
I liked Burke's style and her characters' voices, and how she tackles the weird and horror. In the midst of all the stories "The Unremembered" hit me in the face with the worst disability trope, in this case . The rest of the collection was solid, with "Purse", "CUE: Change" and "The Teachings and Redemption of Ms. Fannie Lou Mason" among my favorites.
Spoiler
an autistic character is actually a griot that inherits the memories of her ancestors and once she learns to deal with them, she's cured (and apparently able to cure others)raincorbyn's review against another edition
4.0
Scary, sad, deeeeeply uncomfortable to read (in the best, intentional way) and so powerful. Not every story in the collection worked for me, but Burke's imagination, writing, and bleak humor carried me through. Can't wait for more from her.
megapolisomancy's review against another edition
3.0
A collection of horror/dark fantasy/historical fiction stories about the experiences of black, poor and/or female people in the United States - a sadly-uncommon viewpoint in the genre. Thematically, Burke's stories tend to revolve around awakenings of various sorts, and the fact that her protagonists tend to end their stories on an upward trajectory is, again, an unusual one in the genre - there's a lot of breaking free from false consciousness here (what the kids call getting "woke"). The epigraph for one story is a very apropos Du Bois quote about double consciousness.
The stories here are split about 50/50 between previously published ones (dating back to 2004) and new entries (2011), and the latter show a huge increase in confidence and style. The stories are not presented chronologically, which makes reading the collection a very uneven one, but it's worth it to push through to the end. At her worst, Burke's prose is chunky and unconvincing, but when it works it has an appealing folksiness that immerses the reader in the world-weary, worked-past-exhaustion viewpoints of her characters.
Walter and the Three-Legged King (2011)
Walter, a down-on-his-luck black laborer, is about to be evicted from his apartment when he starts having conversations with a rat who has also taken up residence there. The recession is over, he keeps hearing, but that doesn't seem to have given him any more options for work - his white landlord, meanwhile, lives off of family money and suffers from agoraphobia - "one could afford to have a paralyzing fear if one had options in life." King, the rat (a by-product of the squalid environment Walter finds himself in), suggests that the solution to Walter's problems just might be "playing white" and he uses this advice to transition from non-existant factory work to the service economy. A smart, important story.
Purse (2011)
A quick conte cruel about a down-on-her-luck black woman riding the NYC subway and her descent into paranoia. Introduces the theme of black women's sexuality, which runs throughout many of the stories here, but also prose-wise a weak point of Burke's, who has a strange way of framing illicit subjects like sex and drugs, as in "She never thought that maybe, just maybe, he wanted to steal the priceless valuables that she kept safely hidden under her skirt and between her ebony legs. The one thing her husband had always called his 'special place.'"
I Make People Do Bad Things (2011)
Historical fiction slightly weirded - Stephanie "Queenie" Saint-Clair, a numbers-running gangster/Robin Hood-ish figure in Prohibition-era Harlem, was a real person, as was her associate Bumpy Johnson and her rival Dutch Schultz, but here she's also paired up with the daughter of a prostitute who has the supernatural ability to make people kill themselves. Another story of Black Americans with few options in hopeless, miserable places, but this one kind of runs out of steam and falters into a rushed ending.
The Unremembered (2010)
A severely autistic girl is in the hospital because of increasingly-frequent seizures and self-inflicted(?) wounds, accompanied only by her distraught and harried mother. She serves as a metaphor for the black diaspora in the US - her grandmother had carried on the tradition of the griots, but her mother had turned her back on it (possibly in favor of a rather predatory Christianity). A series of dreams of Africa awakens her to reality.
Chocolate Park (2004)
A Rashomon-style mosaic story set in the projects, focusing on three orphaned sisters and a black magic woman navigating an environment of crime and prostitution and abject poverty. The low point of the collection - like I said, Burke has an odd way of talking about sex and "the drugs," which gives this story a deficit from which it never manages to recover.
What She Saw When They Flew Away (2011)
A mother mourns the loss of one of her twin daughters (who loved to run) while setting free their pet birds. The only strictly mimetic/realist piece here.
He Who Takes Away the Pain (2004)
A short, odd allegory about a misogynistic cult on a small island off the coast of Africa whose members focus on the titular deity(?) and resist the ministrations of a mysterious nurse even as they all die of smallpox. Like "The Unremembered," the suggestion seems to be that African American faith in Christianity is misplaced.
CUE: Change (2011)
In which Burke actually makes a zombie apocalypse interesting by presenting it through the eyes of characters whose lives already took place in a racist hellscape. I've avoided mentioning Butler so far because I think that's a lazy shortcut for people talking about black women writing in genre, but her work gets explicitly mentioned in this one, so... there you go. The apocalypse, it seems, started in the inner cities, wherein the zombies were initially somewhat camouflaged because of the outside (white) world's lack of attention. There's a twist that's thematically opposed to "Walter and the Three-Legged King," and while this was a great story (and kind of the heart of the collection), I think there's a tension resulting from it trying to be two different stories at once that never really gets resolved.
The Room Where Ben Disappeared (2004)
A white man returns to the town of his childhood, where his haunted house leads him to reexamine some repressed memories about race in the Jim Crow South. More Jackson/Aickmanish than the others.
The Light of Cree (2006)
A girl gets her first period and also the ability to see and guide dead people. This is like an unfinished rough draft of the next story.
The Teachings and Redemption of Ms. Fannie Lou Mason (2011)
The distillation of all the other stories into one novella; by far the best (and longest) work here, it manages to grapple convincingly with racism, misogyny, colorism, sisterhood, communitarianism, generational divides, untrustworthy churches, and agency and passivity, even while shephering along a well-paced and interesting plotline. A witch plies her trade in Colored Town, KY some time in the early 20th century, and finds a set of young twins who need her guidance in harnessing their powers (especially to see and guide dead people). Also, a creepy haunted house!
The stories here are split about 50/50 between previously published ones (dating back to 2004) and new entries (2011), and the latter show a huge increase in confidence and style. The stories are not presented chronologically, which makes reading the collection a very uneven one, but it's worth it to push through to the end. At her worst, Burke's prose is chunky and unconvincing, but when it works it has an appealing folksiness that immerses the reader in the world-weary, worked-past-exhaustion viewpoints of her characters.
Walter and the Three-Legged King (2011)
Walter, a down-on-his-luck black laborer, is about to be evicted from his apartment when he starts having conversations with a rat who has also taken up residence there. The recession is over, he keeps hearing, but that doesn't seem to have given him any more options for work - his white landlord, meanwhile, lives off of family money and suffers from agoraphobia - "one could afford to have a paralyzing fear if one had options in life." King, the rat (a by-product of the squalid environment Walter finds himself in), suggests that the solution to Walter's problems just might be "playing white" and he uses this advice to transition from non-existant factory work to the service economy. A smart, important story.
Purse (2011)
A quick conte cruel about a down-on-her-luck black woman riding the NYC subway and her descent into paranoia. Introduces the theme of black women's sexuality, which runs throughout many of the stories here, but also prose-wise a weak point of Burke's, who has a strange way of framing illicit subjects like sex and drugs, as in "She never thought that maybe, just maybe, he wanted to steal the priceless valuables that she kept safely hidden under her skirt and between her ebony legs. The one thing her husband had always called his 'special place.'"
I Make People Do Bad Things (2011)
Historical fiction slightly weirded - Stephanie "Queenie" Saint-Clair, a numbers-running gangster/Robin Hood-ish figure in Prohibition-era Harlem, was a real person, as was her associate Bumpy Johnson and her rival Dutch Schultz, but here she's also paired up with the daughter of a prostitute who has the supernatural ability to make people kill themselves. Another story of Black Americans with few options in hopeless, miserable places, but this one kind of runs out of steam and falters into a rushed ending.
The Unremembered (2010)
A severely autistic girl is in the hospital because of increasingly-frequent seizures and self-inflicted(?) wounds, accompanied only by her distraught and harried mother. She serves as a metaphor for the black diaspora in the US - her grandmother had carried on the tradition of the griots, but her mother had turned her back on it (possibly in favor of a rather predatory Christianity). A series of dreams of Africa awakens her to reality.
Chocolate Park (2004)
A Rashomon-style mosaic story set in the projects, focusing on three orphaned sisters and a black magic woman navigating an environment of crime and prostitution and abject poverty. The low point of the collection - like I said, Burke has an odd way of talking about sex and "the drugs," which gives this story a deficit from which it never manages to recover.
What She Saw When They Flew Away (2011)
A mother mourns the loss of one of her twin daughters (who loved to run) while setting free their pet birds. The only strictly mimetic/realist piece here.
He Who Takes Away the Pain (2004)
A short, odd allegory about a misogynistic cult on a small island off the coast of Africa whose members focus on the titular deity(?) and resist the ministrations of a mysterious nurse even as they all die of smallpox. Like "The Unremembered," the suggestion seems to be that African American faith in Christianity is misplaced.
CUE: Change (2011)
In which Burke actually makes a zombie apocalypse interesting by presenting it through the eyes of characters whose lives already took place in a racist hellscape. I've avoided mentioning Butler so far because I think that's a lazy shortcut for people talking about black women writing in genre, but her work gets explicitly mentioned in this one, so... there you go. The apocalypse, it seems, started in the inner cities, wherein the zombies were initially somewhat camouflaged because of the outside (white) world's lack of attention. There's a twist that's thematically opposed to "Walter and the Three-Legged King," and while this was a great story (and kind of the heart of the collection), I think there's a tension resulting from it trying to be two different stories at once that never really gets resolved.
The Room Where Ben Disappeared (2004)
A white man returns to the town of his childhood, where his haunted house leads him to reexamine some repressed memories about race in the Jim Crow South. More Jackson/Aickmanish than the others.
The Light of Cree (2006)
A girl gets her first period and also the ability to see and guide dead people. This is like an unfinished rough draft of the next story.
The Teachings and Redemption of Ms. Fannie Lou Mason (2011)
The distillation of all the other stories into one novella; by far the best (and longest) work here, it manages to grapple convincingly with racism, misogyny, colorism, sisterhood, communitarianism, generational divides, untrustworthy churches, and agency and passivity, even while shephering along a well-paced and interesting plotline. A witch plies her trade in Colored Town, KY some time in the early 20th century, and finds a set of young twins who need her guidance in harnessing their powers (especially to see and guide dead people). Also, a creepy haunted house!